Mona Scott-Young is the face behind two of the most popular reality shows on VH1. She produced “Love & Hip Hop” and its wildly popular Atlanta spinoff and is now lending her talents to “The Gossip Game” which debuts on Monday, April 1st. Though she’s been hugely successful in garnering ratings for the network, Mona is widely criticized for the portrayal of black women on her shows. Fights, love triangles, arguments, name-calling and back-stabbing are commonplace on the “Love and Hip Hop” series, which features rappers and the women who love them behaving badly.

Mona addressed her critics at a press roundtable event this Monday, saying:

“Often times people tell me how horrible it is, or how these women should go crawl under a rock. I’m not here to judge them! I think that these women are a part of our population as African Americans. They live real lives and their stories deserve to be told as much as the other stories. I encourage them to use this as a platform. I will never forget the first time I gave Joseline a check and she cried. Prior to that she has never seen her name printed on a check because she was only ever paid in dollar bills, so don’t tell me I’m not changing lives.”

She plans to continue changing lives for the better with the new show, “The Gossip Game.” She gave the press some insight into how the cast was chosen:

“We met with them and tried to find different lives and mediums to represent. I walked into the situation thinking that there was a pecking order. You have TV and radio journalists, then you’ve got the freelancers, then the bloggers, almost like they were at the bottom of the totem pole. But what I realized is that all of the folks in the different areas get their news from the bloggers. They’re probably a little more important than people want to give them credit for and we wanted to explore that.”

The Monami Entertainment founder has a new show on Bravo called “Taking Atlanta” in the works which will feature women chasing success in Georgia’s capital including a boutique owner and an aspiring trophy wife. She also is coming out with her own brand of dessert wine, Myx Fusion Moscato.